This section is intended to introduce the reader to various aspects of art, which may be related to various aspects of the present invention that are described or claimed below. This discussion is believed to be helpful in providing the reader with background information to facilitate a better understanding of the various aspects of the present invention. Accordingly, it should be understood that these statements are to be read in this light, and not as admissions of prior art.
In the field of computer networking, remote control technology allows one computer to control another. To enable remote control, the two computers are typically connected by some kind of high-speed network, with a screen sharing application running on each one. In most remote control solutions, the two computers are connected via the same local area network (LAN), which is a high-speed connection that supports direct communication between any attached computers.
Providing remote control over the internet usually involves some sort of port-forwarding scheme, such as is provided by secure shell (SSH) servers. The SSH server is used to establish a virtual private network (VPN) between the controlling computer and the controlled computer. Once this VPN is set up between the two computers (via the SSH server), no other computers can join the connection to collaborate or otherwise participate in the session.
In a customer support situation, a team of collaborating support technicians is usually connected via a LAN. Each technician services an individual support request from a customer. A remote control session between the technician's computer and the customer's computer allows the technician to resolve the customer's problem much more efficiently than by describing the repair steps over the telephone or via a chat message. When the technician encounters a difficult problem and requires assistance from a peer, the ability to collaborate via the network improves the productivity of both support technicians or engineers and generally increases customer satisfaction. One shortcoming of a VPN solution for remote control is that only one computer can participate in the remote control session. Moreover, the network bandwidth over the internet limits the ability to share the connection with others.
While a collaborating technician could start a remote control session with the fellow technician, the extra work of the additional remote control session taxes the first technician's computer. Alternatively, a new VPN connection could be set up and used to connect to the remote computer, but the extra network traffic would burden the end-user's internet connection.
An additional concern is that a customer's sensitive data is exposed to the technician during a help session in which the technician has access to a customer's computer. To provide verification that the technician did not access, modify, or remove any of the sensitive data, it is desirable to record the session actions and screen shots of the session in case a customer later claims that sensitive data was compromised.
An alternative to VPN connection sharing is the use of software tools that allow multiple users to join in a live meeting. Hewlett-Packard's (HP's) Virtual Classroom and Microsoft's NetMeeting are examples of such tools. In those systems, one person in the meeting runs a presentation, typically by sharing the desktop of a computer with other participants. Unlike NetMeeting, which requires a LAN connection, Virtual Classroom allows participants to join via the internet. In NetMeeting, only one participant at any time can control the shared application, and control can be passed between any of the participants. In HP Virtual Classroom, only participants who enter the tool as presenters can share content, but control can be passed between them. Neither NetMeeting nor Virtual Classroom provides for recording of the network packets. Instead, they both rely on external tools to record the entire screen as a movie.
HP Virtual Classroom is hosted on a set of servers maintained by HP information technology (IT) resources. All session information is maintained on those servers and is communicated over the internet. As more participants connect, they connect to the Virtual Classroom servers directly. There is no point-to-point remote control. In NetMeeting, all traffic passes through the computer that hosts the meeting. If the hosting computer is connected (via a general VPN service) over a broadband network, the performance for all participants is impacted. Also, every new session connects directly to the host computer, even though NetMeeting provides no built-in support for connecting over the internet without installing a VPN client.